Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.

You’ve probably seen text like this somewhere around. It is the standard dummy text used by designers and printers when the actual text is not available. It looks like Latin, but other than that it looks like unrecognisable rubbish. And it is. That’s the point. But it has a history which goes back thousands of years.

The use of lorem ipsum  (so called because it almost always begins with “Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet”) as dummy text has been traced all the way back to the 1500s, when an unknown printer created a specimen book by scrambling up random latin text. It continues to be used by typesetters to this day. In the 1960s, Letraset released sheets containing lorem ipsum passages, and the concept made the jump into digital publishing early with such applications as Aldus PageMaker. Today, you can generate lorem ipsum text in MS Word by typing: “=lorem(3,10)”, which will produce 3 paragraphs, each with 10 sentences of random lorem ipsum text.

It turns out, however, that the original lorem ipsum text is not quite so random after all. Richard McClintock, of Hampden-Sydney college, did a search for the unusual word ‘consectetur’ in classic latin literature, and discovered the following passage in “de Finibus Bonorum et Malorum” (The Extremes of Good and Evil) by Cicero, written in 45 BC:

Sed ut perspiciatis unde omnis iste natus error sit voluptatem accusantium doloremque laudantium, totam rem aperiam, eaque ipsa quae ab illo inventore veritatis et quasi architecto beatae vitae dicta sunt explicabo. Nemo enim ipsam voluptatem quia voluptas sit aspernatur aut odit aut fugit, sed quia consequuntur magni dolores eos qui ratione voluptatem sequi nesciunt. Neque porro quisquam est, qui dolorem ipsum quia dolor sit amet, consectetur, adipisci velit, sed quia non numquam eius modi tempora incidunt ut labore et dolore magnam aliquam quaerat voluptatem. Ut enim ad minima veniam, quis nostrum exercitationem ullam corporis suscipit laboriosam, nisi ut aliquid ex ea commodi consequatur? Quis autem vel eum iure reprehenderit qui in ea voluptate velit esse quam nihil molestiae consequatur, vel illum qui dolorem eum fugiat quo voluptas nulla pariatur?

Why do we use it?

We use lorem ipsum text as a placeholder for actual text when we don’t have the actual text itself for several reasons. Most obviously, it’s traditional – it’s what our teachers used, and it works well.

Second, developers are essentially lazy. We don’t want to have to create or compose relevant dummy text for every occasion. We don’t really care what text goes in the space; we’re more worried about spacing all the other things around the text.

The reason we use random latin text, however, is precisely because you can’t read and understand it. The moment you see words you can read and understand, you do that, and this affects your opinions of the layout. It will also focus you too much on the text of the page, and not enough on the rest of the layout. When we present you with a design or layout that contains lorem ipsum text, it is usually to get your opinion or approval of a more general layout that includes space for text. We need you to specifically not focus on the text, so we make it unintelligible, while still using text in patterns that resemble the final outcome.

Unfortunately, sometimes lorem ipsum text gets left behind. For example, we used to provide all our websites with pre-built privacy policies containing lorem ipsum text, with the idea that the client would replace that with actual text. Turns out, that almost never happens, and some sites still had dummy text a while after the site was launched. We no longer provide supporting pages without actual, usable (if rather generic) content.

The risk still exists, however, that lorem ipsum text may be used and then forgotten. Whenever your web developers give you a site (or an update to your site), you should always go through it to check each page. You should do this anyway, but while you’re doing this, remember to check for stray lorem ipsum text as well.

Translations

In 1914, H. Rackman translated Cicero’s “de Finibus Bonorum et Malorum” into English, and, just for fun, I’ve included his translations of the two primary passages identified by professor McClintock below:

“But I must explain to you how all this mistaken idea of denouncing pleasure and praising pain was born and I will give you a complete account of the system, and expound the actual teachings of the great explorer of the truth, the master-builder of human happiness. No one rejects, dislikes, or avoids pleasure itself, because it is pleasure, but because those who do not know how to pursue pleasure rationally encounter consequences that are extremely painful. Nor again is there anyone who loves or pursues or desires to obtain pain of itself, because it is pain, but because occasionally circumstances occur in which toil and pain can procure him some great pleasure. To take a trivial example, which of us ever undertakes laborious physical exercise, except to obtain some advantage from it? But who has any right to find fault with a man who chooses to enjoy a pleasure that has no annoying consequences, or one who avoids a pain that produces no resultant pleasure?”

“On the other hand, we denounce with righteous indignation and dislike men who are so beguiled and demoralized by the charms of pleasure of the moment, so blinded by desire, that they cannot foresee the pain and trouble that are bound to ensue; and equal blame belongs to those who fail in their duty through weakness of will, which is the same as saying through shrinking from toil and pain. These cases are perfectly simple and easy to distinguish. In a free hour, when our power of choice is untrammelled and when nothing prevents our being able to do what we like best, every pleasure is to be welcomed and every pain avoided. But in certain circumstances and owing to the claims of duty or the obligations of business it will frequently occur that pleasures have to be repudiated and annoyances accepted. The wise man therefore always holds in these matters to this principle of selection: he rejects pleasures to secure other greater pleasures, or else he endures pains to avoid worse pains.”

Source: http://www.lipsum.com